The time Harlan wore
his octagonal
binoculars and read from the tiny book of instructions for a meaningful
love, Toland called him Lorenzo and together they skipped about the
kitchen wearing pots as hats. Then fingering a passage in the tiny book
Harlan took his binoculars off, in their place put two slices of onion,
and wept up a rainstorm into all his many hats. “Where,”
asked Harlan, filling pot after pot with tears, “are my gardening
gloves?” Toland from some basil sewed the three pointy pairs and
Harlan called her Isabel. And the tiny book became the word for rainbow
and spilled into Harlan’s many gloved hands. But the rainbow was
thirsty and no matter how many onions Toland sliced Harlan could not go
on filling her pots. Will nothing make you wet? she asked, threading
her fingers through his nose to inhale the basil. But Harlan shook his
head until his gloves fell off. So Toland untangled her head from her
body and piled it like plumbing in a nest of pot. As Harlan wept up a
rainstorm into Toland’s pipes of hair the tiny book became so
meaningful all its words were smudged.